Editorial/Op-EdFooling ourselves in battle on AIDSWorld AIDS Day, Dec. 1 each year, is one of the few times in the annual media cycle when the pandemic affecting more than 30 million people worldwide  even under U.N. AIDS's newly downgraded estimates  still garners widespread attention.

Fountain figures might pour cold water on projectBy Lincoln Anderson
As workers pounded in tall fence posts and moved stacks of metal barriers into Washington Square Park on Monday and Tuesday, cordoning off the area for Phase I of the park's renovation, opponents were making a last-ditch effort to derail the project.

NEWSN.Y.U . eyes superblocks for super-sizing planBy Lincoln Anderson
Although New York University isn't revealing specifics yet on its plans to expand its facilities in its so-called campus core over the next 25 years, some clues on how and where N.Y.U. might try to do so are starting to emerge.

Trash trucks, not trapezes, is latest idea for Pier 40By Josh Rogers
If you think community activists would be leading the opposition to a plan to put garbage trucks in a waterfront park, guess again. Some of them have begun to float the idea of moving trucks to Pier 40 to drive off a proposed entertainment center to be built near the pier's playing fields.

Trust appointee's wife is on Pier 40 parents groupBy Josh Rogers
Governor Eliot Spitzer has turned to a Villager whose children use Pier 40 to serve on the Hudson River Park Trust's board, but the appointee's connections to a local group could prevent him from weighing in on the Trust's next big decision.

Ball field becomes battlefield for community boardsBy Julie Shapiro
When the Parks Department and the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation sited a ball field in Corlears Hook Park  Community Board 3 territory  without consulting the board and the community, C.B. 3 members got angry.

ARTS AND LIFESTYLE

No peace in this Mideast, but plenty of melodiesBy Lee Ann Westover
It's always a dangerous prospect to buy tickets to a musical about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict  less for the risk of bodily injury than for the likelihood that the show will be ineffective. If it's overly sentimental, the story can crush an audience with its weight. Make it too snarky, and cool-kid distance can detract from the seriousness of the subject. Happily, playwright Oren Safdie strikes a delicate balance between the two in "West Bank, UK," bringing us both a refreshingly light-hearted comedy about two personalities from opposite sides of the border, and a serious exploration of the issues that prevent a resolution to the real-life struggle.

The strong but silent approach to IraqBy Steven Snyder
For a story so well stocked in tears and turmoil, there's a surprising lack of melodrama to be found in "Grace is Gone." Instead, this sparse, subtle story, which took the Sundance Film Festival by storm last January and was quickly snatched up by the Weinstein Company as one of its Oscar heavyweights, is less a movie about the dead than the living; less about the horrors of war than a bruised and confused homefront.

Loneliness by the dashboard lightBy JERRY TALLMER
In a rundown petrol station in County Armagh, just across the border between Ireland and Northern Ireland, the pumps are manned, so to speak, by a bluejeaned young woman of indeterminate gender. Nobody remembers her name. They just call her Pumpgirl, as she does herself. She is the butt of lots of crass halfwitticisms ("… does look a bit AC/DC, doesn't she?") from the mouths of smartass bypassing females, and even more telling jibes (" … walks like John Wayne and looks like his horse") by the boozy, boasting local males.

Take the PATH to the pastBy WILL McKINLEY
The best place to see a movie in New York City isn't in New York City. It's in Jersey City.